A Flickr Fliction: Not Bright Enough for Me

When I started teaching Spanish in 1968, I used transparency pictures for class writing, conversations, oral comprehension and quizzes on a daily basis. (The overhead was a new technology back then!) Yes, it was a big pain to find the right picture from magazines or newspaper and then to make transparencies of the pictures. Yes, sometimes the transparencies melted (cheap transparencies and hot overhead machines). Also, I used a slide projector to show cultural pictures that I had taken in Spanish speaking countries. In 1975, I wrote an article (“Using Visual Material in the Foreign Language Classroom” Learning Resources, Vol 2-5 ,Feb. 1975, 9-13)on improving students’ language and cultural skills through fifty uses of visuals in the Foreign Language classroom. In addition, I mailed (not emailed) pictures of our area to students in Spanish speaking countries who asked us questions about our area. I made handouts of pictures for students to use in a variety of group activities within the classroom.

The basic educational concept has not changed throughout the years. Many students are visual learners and they react well to visual images. Can you say Millenial students? The students are engaged when visuals are used.

So, what would I like from Fliction? I want it to do more than I could do with the overhead, slides, handouts or mailing pictures. I want a more powerful learning technology. So far, based on the two presentations I have seen on Fliction, I have only seen one story attached to one specific picture and one comment on that writing. What about multiple stories to one picture? What about “continue my story” approach?What about two contrasting pictures to create higher level learning about a topic? What about a series of pictures showing a local community or topic? What about multiple comments to the multiple stories? What about a dialogue between the picture presenter and the story writer? What about writers role playing different people in the picture and having a conversation. For example, in above picture which I took are the two people happy or sad? What are they saying to each other? What are they saying about their location? How might the location represent their relationship?

Visuals are rich learning resources. I want students to have rich responses to them and to be able to respond to the pictures easily.

I’ll wait for a better developed learning-embedded technology image than Fliction. I’ll wait for a brighter use of technology to help students express their in depth ideas.

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1 Response to “A Flickr Fliction: Not Bright Enough for Me”

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